


Voyaging Thoughts

by ka_tsu_ra



Series: No Law Less Than Ourselves [1]
Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Super Sentai Series
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, Post-Series, awkward dork pirates are the best pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ka_tsu_ra/pseuds/ka_tsu_ra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"These thoughts didn't feel like his own, but they were."</p>
<p>Lulled by the quiet after the crew's departure from Earth, Marvelous escapes to the crow's nest to brood on things besides food and treasure and battle. He asks himself questions he'd long ago discarded, and to his surprise finds the answers climbing up to join him.</p>
<p>The first in a trilogy of stories written as gifts to friends to celebrate our newfound freedom to marry whoever we choose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voyaging Thoughts

'What's it feel like to love someone?'

'What's it feel like to be loved?'

These thoughts didn't feel like his own, but they were. The questions had arisen first in a smaller and softer Marvelous than the one in the crow's nest that night, but they were his. They bubbled to the surface of his mind, drawn out by a return to the kind of stillness and security his small and soft self lost years before. Tamped down for nearly three years, shunted aside for more immediate concerns, they were questions yet unresolved. Time alone provided no answers, and now he found himself pondering them alone in the safety of the crow's nest. He leaned back against the mast, arms folded, and took in the distant bright forms of stars and nearby planets. There was no shortage of spectacular views in space, but they were near enough to Earth still that he could make it out as a lonely blue star. His savior's home. Gai's home. His home, functionally, for longer than he'd ever stayed within a planet's atmosphere by choice.

He loved Earth, even if Gai would never, ever hear him say it.

'What's it feel like to love someone?'

'What's it feel like to be loved?'

He'd started to wonder again in the weeks between Zangyack's fall and their departure from Earth, slowly, cautiously. It was too easy on a night like this, their first night in space with his crew asleep below deck and his stomach full of food and no threat or terror immediately looming, to backslide into the breakable Marvelous who wanted to understand things like love.

His models had never been good. They weren't plentiful, either, but they'd never been good. He'd paid for wondering and trusting, and he hadn't paid alone.

The hatch – over which he stood as a failsafe should the latch not hold up and keep intruders at bay – jounced under his feet. He scoffed. Let them go back down for all he cared. He'd claimed the nest for the night.

“Marvelous!”

Marvelous stepped to one side and kicked the bolt on the hatch free. Funny how the reason he'd retreated to the nest in the first place was also the only reason he'd compromise his sanctuary. Joe emerged, stretched as if just rising from bed, and went to look out over the railing without uttering a word. Marvelous could only stand to watch his back for a moment or so before joining him.

“I know you didn't come up here to look at the stars,” Marvelous said, arms folded on the railing so he could rest on it. “Out with it.”

“You're avoiding me.” No mincing words, straight for the killing blow. “Why?”

Marvelous drew his shoulders up without realizing. “Don't be stupid.”

“If it's about what I said today-”

“What'd you say that'd make me avoid you?” Marvelous stood straight and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Don't overthink stuff like that.”

What happened next closed Marvelous' throat long enough for Joe to get a word in edgewise: Joe tugged the cuff of his sleeve, found resistance, bypassed it by slipping the same hand into his coat pocket, and fished his hand out. Joe's left, his right, tangled up between them. Marvelous turned his head on reflex and found himself fixed with one of Joe's very serious looks.

“I told you I'm with you even beyond your newest dream, didn't I?”

'What's it feel like to love someone?'

Did it feel anything like falling bloody and broken into a pair of waiting arms and thinking – with what you're certain is the last consciousness you'll ever know – 'Forgive me for leaving. But if the last thing I see of any world is your face, fallen but safe and alive, it's all right?'

Did it feel anything like that?

“Yeah. You've said that a couple times.” Marvelous' fingers curled reflexively around Joe's They were warm and even in the crow's nest space could be cold. But Marvelous was warm, too.

“I know.” Joe breathed the words and squeezed Marvelous' hand harder like he could wring out the captain's usual courage and infuse it into his next words. “And I'll say it for every new dream. I'm with you regardless, for every new dream, every new day, as long as you'll have me.”

'What's it feel like to be loved?'

It had to be a certainty, something that Marvelous with his imperfect models seldom experienced. A constant. Wasn't it knowing that someone would return to you again and again, wasn't it insisting with all your conviction that this was true because you knew it? Yes, it must be a constant, it must be that certainty.

Marvelous felt his mouth fall open before he fully realized that his expression had changed. He shut it and swallowed. He felt adrift somehow, and he twined his fingers more tightly in Joe's to remind himself that he was moored in familiar waters.

Joe's expression didn't shift much. The hard line of his mouth softened and lifted a bit. “I'll only ask if you'll have me once. It's your call what happens to me if you won't, but this would be the last of it. Well?”

Marvelous puffed out a little laugh and put on an imitation of his feral smile. “Not really sure if you're asking me what I think you're asking me.”

“Answer the question you think I'm asking, then.”

How ridiculous that the answers had come slinking around in the years he'd spent not searching. Even more ridiculous that he'd failed to see them for what they were. Marvelous' smile turned genuine, but he couldn't take the shake out of it. This was all so beyond him. His experiences were vast, but they omitted this, his models were bad, they hadn't prepared him.

“You know I will.”

The angles in Joe's face softened and his smile became a broad but tremulous thing to match Marvelous'. “What do you think I'm asking?”

He could have said something smart, could have undercut it all with a joke, and maybe a few months before he might've done just that. As it stood that night, though, he was closer to his open, wondering self than he'd been in years. And Joe, being the first person he'd pulled aboard since AkaRed died, might have come closest to knowing that Marvelous.

“I think you're asking me if I'd marry you.” It was hard to maintain eye contact while the words left his mouth, like the deck had developed a powerful gravity that exclusively targeted his face.

“And you would?”

Marvelous' smile straightened and he forced his eyes forward. “Yeah.”

Joe didn't speak again. He pulled Marvelous close by their connected hands and disentangled them to wrap his arms around him. Marvelous caught on fast. He leaned in to kiss him and it felt sweet and stolen and earned all at once.

It didn't last long. What did last was the peaceful sitting in silence that came after, the star gazing and lounging in the certainty he could finally acknowledge as what it surely must feel like to be loved.

 


End file.
